Frustration mounts in search for 3 missing American soldiers

MAHMOUDIYA, Iraq -- Sweat-drenched U.S. and Iraqi soldiers sprawled on the muddy farmhouse floor, taking a break from the grueling search for three kidnapped comrades. A report of a soldier shot by a sniper came over the radio.

The platoon commander ordered his men to their feet and they dashed off to help. The sniper victim's unit had no medic, but the one taking a rest did.

The search for the troops who went missing after a May 12 ambush is grinding down U.S. forces already strained by the push to restore calm in and around Baghdad.

Firefights erupt daily as troops search a 135-square-mile area south of the capital. Roadside bombs hit armored Humvees. The troops have taken to walking but the fields are heavily mined. Still, the military insists it won't quit until it finds the missing men or knows what happened to them.

Tips have poured in but most have ended in disappointment, with no sign of Pfc. Joseph J. Anzack Jr., 20, of Torrance, Calif., Spc. Alex R. Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Mass. or Pvt. Byron W. Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Mich.

American soldiers with the Bravo Company, Second Battalion, 10th Mountain Division, and their Iraqi counterparts have spent days trudging through rough terrain -- muddy canal banks lined with tall reeds, parched farmland and fields of wildflowers.

Capt. Aaron Bright's troops were debating how long they should rest in the two-story farm house, where they took refuge after three hours of searching, when they got the call that a soldier had been shot through the forehead by a sniper.

Spc. Andrew Carbajal, a 20-year-old medic from Iowa, grabbed his bag and leapt to his feet and sprinted with fellow troopers over parched fields and through a date palm grove to reach the site of the attack, 2.5 miles away. .

Bright said most of the troops have lost weight, many as much as 12 pounds, as the temperature has climbed above 100 degrees. The searchers spend hours patrolling only to return to base after the mess hall closes.

Bright was forced to cancel a rest day for one platoon and send it out searching in place of the company that was hit by the roadside bomb Saturday.

"I was going to give them a break today," the 29-year-old platoon commander said. "But we're going to do the mission and we'll be as vigilant as ever."